Capcom's SVP Responds To BBB Rating Drop

In some regards, as a pretty big fan of many of Capcom's games, I feel kind of bad about all the negative press they've received. It's hard to tell right now if it's actually having a negative effect on the overall company, but if the senior vice president gets involved we have to imagine it might be getting pretty bad.

Now, a lot of people might assume here at Gaming Blend we hate Capcom, you couldn't be further from the truth. Me, personally, I love a lot of Capcom games, Lost Planet 2 is one of my favorite games this gen, and Resident Evil 4 is a game I've replayed and beat no less than 15 times (I used to play the GameCube version religiously nearly every day). All the negative press isn't just for kicks, it's more like tough love...to show the company that while we're still loyal we also don't appreciate these growing anti-consumerist, pro-corporate business tactics. Strong-arming gamers into picking and choosing DLC content that they know many fans want, or disc-locking the content out to pad profits long after the game's release, not to mention stripping off and selling endings for a game is just really pushing the limits.

Well, gamers had an opportunity to ask Capcom's SVP, Christian Svensson, about a couple of things regarding Street Fighter X Tekken, and Event Hubs did a nice job of collecting the questions and answers from Capcom's Unity board. First up, Svensson addressed the sound issue and network latency for online multiplayer, saying...

The patch should be live... as far as I know, it's still roll-back/fixed input (not variable input delay based). As I understand it (and my understanding to be honest is somewhat limited so take this with a grain of salt) it's an issue of having sounds trigger and play through frames that get dropped or rolled back.

In short... I'm not sure why there's concern. Download the patch and try it for yourself. Most of the feedback I've seen is that the network play is largely unchanged but just that the sounds work as intended now.

Well at least the jaggy-sound is resolved, eh? Eh? Well, anyways Svensson went on to discuss a few more issues, namely the PC benchmarking capabilities for Street Fighter X Tekken, especially given that Svensson previously stated that it would pretty much but a copy-paste job from the Xbox 360.

...spoke with Derek a few mins ago... indeed there is a benchmark in-game for SFxT so folks can optimize their settings for 60fps goodness.

Nice, that's really good news. Given that they took the time to remove the on-disc DLC from the PC version of Street Fighter X Tekken and not add in pair-play, I was afraid benchmarking may have been left on the cutting room floor, too. However, the real bread and butter of the discussion involves their Better Business Bureau rating, which recently took a dumpster dive into the B-grade territory thanks to gamers who decided to stand up and fight for their consumer rights. Svensson offers up this shiny, glistening, well-polished response when asked how Capcom executives feel about the recent rating drop, saying...

Sorry, but there's no benefit to us (or to our consumers) by commenting on this.

Bam, there you have it folks. That's what Capcom thinks about their Better Business Bureau rating being kicked in the gonads and losing a few grade points. Either that's because it really has hurt the company (in some way?) or he's really trying to avoid a firestorm of more bad press. But, even by not commenting it still turned out to be a comment and gamers can take it as they see fit.

I at least still have to give props to Svensson for continually staying in contact with gamers on the "ground" level. On his end, I imagine it must be really awful trying to deal with this whole PR nightmare and gradual reputation degradation.

And for those of you who still feel tempted to buy Street Fighter X Tekken and it's on-disc DLC, please be strong and maintain your entitlement to fair trade and your consumer rights. The content is strong with many of Capcom's games, I know, but remember...just remember...